START Research Assistants Awarded DGH Travel Fellowships

Two START Research Assistants, Danae Black and Dylan Green have been awarded Department of Global Health travel fellowships. Administered by the Global Health Resource Center, the Department’s five travel fellowships are funded through the generous donations of private individuals and organizations, as well as support from the Department of Global Health. Learn more about the Global Health Resource Center’s fellowships for fieldwork here.

Learn more about Danae and Dylan’s research projects below.

Danae Black, PhD student, Department of Epidemiology | Kenya
Project: Transitioning from Pediatric to Adult HIV Care

Danae Black is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington (UW). Danae received her MPH in Global Health Epidemiology from the George Washington University. Danae’s research interests include tuberculosis, global health, maternal and child health, and infectious disease epidemiology. Since at UW, she has continued pursing her research interests in TB, specifically within an implementation science study among HIV-infected adolescents. The “Transitioning from Pediatric to Adult HIV Care in Kenya” study aims to assess co-factors for effective transition of pediatric HIV individuals from pediatric to adult health care services. Danae hopes to specifically investigate associations with TB screening, preventive treatment, and overall burden among HIV-infected adolescents in this study. This fellowship will provide her with funds to go to Kenya to conduct facility surveys aimed to identify transition and TB prevention services reported and observe integrated TB-HIV care strategies across multiple facilities in Kenya.

Dylan Green, PhD student, Department of Epidemiology | Vietnam

Project: Prevention of HIV in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City

Dylan Green is a second year PhD student in the Epidemiology Department. Prior to beginning the PhD program at the University of Washington, Dylan conducted economic evaluations as a Health Economist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Division for Global HIV/AIDS. He hopes to further his training in health economics, epidemiology, and mathematical modeling through a GO Fellowship-supported research project in Vietnam. He intends to assess the risk behavior of men who have sex with men and transgender women (MSMTG) seeking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the prevention of HIV in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. He will also assess the cost of PrEP provision and estimate the cost-effectiveness of PrEP for MSMTG in Vietnam using a mathematical model. These findings will be valuable to policy makers who aim to finance the highest impact HIV program.

You may read about all 33 of this year’s international travel fellowship awardees here.